


Valhalla

by sweetheartdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean-Centric, Gen, Hunter Retirement, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Snippets, Unreliable Narrator, a pinch of horror for taste, brothers being brothers, s13 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 03:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15258321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetheartdean/pseuds/sweetheartdean
Summary: There’s no place saved up for Dean in heaven, dearly departed at ninety-five, surrounded by ten grandkids. That’s not his speed, never will be.





	Valhalla

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Вальгалла](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16235891) by [TModestova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TModestova/pseuds/TModestova)



> Shout-out to the lovely [julia-sets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crayola/pseuds/julia-sets) for betaing! <3

The sky’s tinged pink. The trees around here are wicked tall, peaks reaching far above his head. A bird squawks somewhere in the distance.

Dean rattles the thermos. Liquid splashes at the very bottom of it, just enough to last them until nightfall. After that, there won’t be any time for coffee anyway. He offers it to Sam, but Sam shakes his head. 

“Hate these hunting hiking trips.” Dean yanks his leather jacket tighter around himself as the evening chill picks up. “Why do these suckers have to live in the woods, huh?”

“I dunno.” Sam pushes his bangs out of his face. “I like it. All these critters out here. Plus, the air isn’t anything like it is back on 66.”

“You like the forest ‘cause of squirrels?” Dean snorts. “Man, you’re an odd one.” 

“It’s not about the squirrels.” A beat. “It’s about… I don’t know. A reminder that we don’t have to be around people to see life.” Sam throws his head back, looking up at the sky, and Dean follows suit. The first pale stars are popping up against the lilac backdrop above their heads.

“Getting deep on me, bro.”

“Just saying. Sometimes I think it would be nice to just go off the grid and live in the woods.”

“Yeah, you’d run back to civilization as soon as you run out of your frizz-be-gone shampoo thing.” Dean picks up a stick and doodles on the soft ground under their feet. Smiley face, then a dick. Sam scoffs. “Tons of creepy-crawlies in the woods, too. Like the ones we’re waiting for right now.”

“Fine. Woods aside, don’t you ever wanna stop?” Sam leans back on the fallen tree trunk Dean’s perched on.

“Like you did?” Dean throws a look over at Sam, checking if the guy has the decency to look half-guilty over his stupid college stunt. He doesn’t. Dean takes a sip from the thermos.

“You know I’m going back once we find Dad,” Sam says, soft, like he’s trying to gently coax Dean into the direction Sam wants to go. Like when he grabbed Dean’s hand with his own and tugged because they sold cotton candy over there, Dean, pleaaaase? Pleasepleaseplease! “You could come with me. Retire. You’ve done enough, Dean. We’ve paid enough.” 

Dean hums noncommittally. Feels like they had this conversation a hundred times. Sam doesn’t love the life and wants to bolt. Dean’s not harboring any illusions that a life like this lets anyone go. Look, Sam got out and then they pulled him right back in. If Dean tries to get out with him, it will end the same way.

Not that he’s even considering it in the first place.

“Quit before your luck runs out. Wasn’t heart failure warning enough?” At this frown rate, Sam will get worry lines on his baby-fresh face real soon.

Dean watches Sam talk, world-weary. They’ve had this talk before and they’ll have it again and every time Dean will give Sam a no, sorry, I can’t, you gotta understand. Like clockwork.

He opens his mouth to give Sam a no thanks speech, but the noise of sneaky footfalls cuts him right off. Dean pats Sam’s shoulder and pulls out his gun. When there are dangers all around, how can a man hang his shotgun up and say, cool, whatever, I did my part? If Sam can, great.

But Dean’s not that guy. There’s no place saved up for him in heaven, dearly departed at ninety-five, surrounded by ten grandkids. That’s not his speed, never will be.

The sky’s full of stars. 

He’s going, hard and fast, to fucking Valhalla. 

(Near goes there that night, but that’s par for the course. Sam hacks the bastard’s head off just in time, anyway.)

-

If he wants to take anyone in this dingy bar home he’d better hurry up. Last call is drawing close and the pickings are growing slim. Maybe it’s for the best—he’s got no home to take his girl of the evening back to. Sam’s sleeping back at the motel while Dean’s busy nursing a drink over here. And Baby, well, he’s just not feeling like bending like a jackknife today.

Maybe he’s just not feeling up to sex. 

Dean crams a fry into his mouth, leaving a trail of dip behind on the bar’s faux marble surface. Might as well be eating chalk.

The howling is faint, more of a ringing in his ears than anything. Faint but unmistakable. 

The hounds, or his damned soul, won’t even let Dean have a last hurrah. Baby doesn’t have her leather and oil smell anymore. Spicy fries crumble into ash on his tongue. Sex, well, let’s just say the last attempt at a jerk-off session was equal parts frustrating and disappointing.

At least whiskey’s still good. 

“Hey, man, another.” The bartender tops off his glass at his beckoning. Dean knows that look, though. He’s well-familiar with it, the “should-I-cut-this-guy-off” squint. Maybe a little too familiar. But there’s no place left for regrets or going sober in a room full of hellhounds.

Man, if Sam wasn’t so hellbent (ha!) on finding some last-minute thing to keep his soul out of the fire, Dean would’ve taken him to Vegas and they’d party it up hard. He’d up and cross off all of his bucket list in one evening. But there’s no Make-A-Wish for dying hunters.

Then again, Dean already made a wish a year ago. He even blew his own candle out just so it would come true. 

It is what it is. 

So it goes, Vonnegut would say. He’ll die as he lived, in some crapsack motel, fighting 'til the last drop of blood. Going on a hookers and coke Vegas binge, going to one of the Great Lakes to die somewhere pretty, hugging his loved ones tearfully, all of it just ain’t the Dean Winchester way.

Sam was dumb to think they could retire together. Dean would be dumb to think Sam was going to retire once he’s gone.

“You okay? You look like someone just walked over your grave.” The bartender. Probably wants to cut him off nice and gentle or whatever. 

“You don’t know the half of it.” Dean looks up. White-knuckles the glass. 

The bartender’s skin is flaying away, coming off in flesh strips to expose the wiring of the muscle beneath. One of his eyeballs is rolling in the socket like a hamster wheel, the other is pierced through by a cocktail pick like an olive for a martini.

Dean flinches hard.

A blink later, the bartender’s all human again. Shit, Dean must’ve dozed off for a second. He takes another sip to calm the nerves. 

It tastes like water.

Dean leaves a generous tip all the same. They won’t bury him with his cash.

The next drink he’ll have will be the one Sam pours out for him.

-

There are five exits from the restaurant. 

First, through the main doors. Tall and heavy and real narrow. In a panic, people would get crushed as they tried to exit, pushing on and on to create a jam.

Second, through the fire door, a red EXIT sign on top of it. Good enough, but it leads to a narrow, long street with next to no cover. Means you have to run hard and fast if whatever’s following can pull off long-range attacks.

Third, through the backdoor in the kitchen. Wouldn’t work out well if the monster is invisible or good at blending in.

Four, through these large windows. They’re welded shut, so he’ll have to shoot through the glass or break it with a chair or this fire extinguisher. Either way, it’s a mess, shards everywhere… not if he can avoid it.

Five, through the roof and—

“Dean?” Lisa’s worried voice cuts through the haze. “Dean.”

He looks up. At Lisa, who’s in a white t-shirt with just enough cleavage that would have him positively salivating, had it been before that day—the day that split his life clean into a before and an after. At Ben, who’s looking at him all confused and a little apprehensive, not that Dean can blame the little dude for that. Who wouldn’t be apprehensive when some war-torn fuck turns up on your doorstep and your mom takes him in out of the goodness of her all too big heart?

“It’s okay,” Lisa says, voice cushion-soft. She doesn’t have to do this. Even if Lucifer is gone, there are things going bump in the night all the same. Dean checks the salt lines every night and every morning. Dean hides sigils all over the house, painted with ink, scribbled in pen, drawn in his own blood. Keeps a gun under the pillow, keeps a knife in his boot.

No way he can protect Lisa and Ben from the most dangerous thing in the house: himself. He’s the one most likely to bring a werewolf with a grudge or a vamp with a bone to pick right into his house. He can almost hear a low growl saying, you killed my family, you bastard, so now I’ll take my frustration out on yours. They’re not awfully imaginative, these things topside. Nothing that would surprise a guy that’s had a demon’s hands in his guts for three decades and then shoved his own into other people’s for one more. 

But these two were civilians that were kind (and stupid) enough to invite in a live grenade.

Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and raise a child, right? Or whatever. Dean did these in the opposite order: raised a kid back when he was a kid himself, rebuilt their home on wheels from scratch after the crash, and planted a tree with Ben a few weeks ago. 

There’s no memorial plate on it, but there’s no one but Dean around to remember the guy he’s honoring with this tree anyway. It’s stupid, but whenever he does stuff around the backyard—and Lisa asks him to all the time, clearly to keep him busy—he spends extra time near that sapling of a tree, meant to become a huge oak someday. Makes sure it’s getting enough water and not being eaten by bugs or drying out in the sun. 

It’s so stupid. A whole fucking forest wouldn’t be much of a comfort to a guy trapped in the darkest corner of Hell with the devil himself. This tree is just to sate Dean’s selfish need to feel better about it all, to pat himself on the back, see, I haven’t forgotten about you.

He never told Ben or Lisa who the tree was for. 

He never spoke a word about his midnight calls to Bobby’s answering machine, drug-addict strung out for a hunt, one more hit, one more case—I need it, I need it, I need it. Bobby replies once, “don’t be stupid, boy, you got something going for you here, I ain’t calling your dumb ass back no more”, and he sticks to his word. Dean’s half relieved for Bobby ignoring him, half annoyed. That single call from Bobby is more than what he gets in replies to his prayers to Castiel, anyway. Which is nada. Zilch.

Even Baby’s covered up under a tarp like a death shroud cover in the garage. She wasn’t built for apple pie life, she was built for fast and furious.

Things move slowly here, stretching like old gum. Takes ages to get anything done. The neighbor across the street has been painting the picket fence a new, fresher shade of white for weeks, with stops and starts. Dean’s about to finish painting the damn thing himself if he doesn’t get a move on.

His old life crumbled. Dust in the wind. He better be moving on before it takes him under too.

“You wanna eat first or you wanna get your gift first?” Dean asks Ben, putting a smile on. The little dude just graduated… some grade, Dean’s memory’s shot to shit right now. The important part here is that he did very well. 

(Someone else got straight As every year, and the pinnacle of celebrating was Dean ruffling his hair and calling him a nerd.)

“Gift first if I can,” Ben’s all excited now. Dean slides a box across the table. Ben tears into the gift wrap, scrambling for the insides, and his face falls just a little when a DVD falls out on the table.

“ _Raiders of the Lost Ark?_ ” Ben says, and he’s a nice kid, so he’s trying his best to show he’s not disappointed, but there’s a near childish pout trying to pry the corners of his mouth down.

“Your mom told me you’ve never seen it. That’s a huge gap in your classic badass movies education, young man.” Dean taps the cover next to Harrison Ford’s face. “When I was your age,” wow, his head might as well have gone gray right now, “it was my favorite. I watched the series over and over again. Taught me so much about how to be a hero.”

But all the movies he’s ever seen taught Dean nothing about how to live once it’s the curtain call and the lights are out. Once you’ve saved the world, what next? Once credits roll, what’s a guy supposed to do? 

Especially if the movie ended with a six-foot-four-sized tragedy. 

“Guess we can watch it, then.” Ben grins. Got a baby face, hair sticking up pretty much any which direction.

Dean looks not at him but past him.

Method number six to exit a scene: awkwardly announce “uh, bathroom”, go splash some cold water on your face until it starts stinging.

Battleships were never meant to rust in the calm of a safe port anyway. 

-

“Talk to me,” Sam mutters, grabbing at the bedsheets. A bead of sweat travels across his forehead and melts into the pillowcase. “Dean? You gotta talk to me, man, please—” He’s shivering like a wet dog, too. Dean checks his watch. Too soon for the next cocktail of pills. They aren’t doing much, but Sam drifts into shallow sleep sometimes. 

Dean scrambles for a speech topic. All he can come up with is ‘how can you not wet your toothbrush _before_ you put your toothpaste on, you heathen?’ but that didn’t exactly make for riveting conversation. 

“Uh, it’s pretty cool we're living here now, right?” Dean looks around. “You still haven’t done much with your room, man. Once you’re done with these trials, we should go all HGTV on this place. Paint some walls, maybe get some new furniture. Put some pictures up. Really break it in, y’know? Make it a home.”

“Not much of a home,” Sam says, voice cracking. “It’s an underground bunker. Not Little House on the Prairie.”

“Well, yeah, it doesn’t feel like home yet. ‘Cause right now, it’s still furnished by some randos from the fifties. I felt like a squatter until I redecorated my room.” 

“So what, you want to do my room, too?” Sam puts on a weak smile. “Never took you for a house decor kind of a guy.”

“I’m full of surprises,” Dean teases, leaning back in the bedside chair. It creaks unhappily under his weight. “Don’t think I should just redecorate it for you. You need to make it your own, man. A shrine to salad in this corner, a poster of Rio here, a poster of Vince Vincente in tight golden pants over there—”

“I hate you so much.” Sam laughs and descends into a coughing fit that shakes his whole frame as he presses a kleenex to his mouth. Sam crumples it up in his hand as soon as he pulls it away, but Dean spots the red stain on it before Sam can throw it out all the same. 

“We’ll free up one of the rooms. Make it a game room instead. I’m talking foosball, a nice flat screen on the wall, maybe a PlayStation so I can kick your ass in those fighting games.”

Sam makes a small noise in disagreement but doesn’t move otherwise. His face is pretty much blending in with the yellowed pillow. Fuck, if only Dean had been the one to rip through the hound’s stomach instead. He could’ve dealt with being the one with the fever and the shakes. He can’t deal with all this. 

“And then we’ll get a grill for the backyard and throw barbeque parties. All the BYOB potlucks, all the time.” Dean reaches out with a towel to wipe Sam’s sweat-stained face. He’s way too far gone to do it himself, whimpering in a half-conscious daze. Sam can’t hear him now, but Dean keeps talking all the same. “We’ll invite the whole crew: Cas, Charlie, Kevin, Garth, Jody… Could put a couple hoops up, too. The team you’ll be on will have an unfair advantage, though.”

Sam doesn’t stir. His eyes are half-lidded and his mouth is pulling in shuddering breaths, he’s a wreck of a man. And he’s getting worse, not better.

“We’ll shut Hell down—you’ll shut Hell down—and we won’t have another worry in the world, dude. We’ll ghost hunt on the weekends, maybe. But as far as I’m concerned, we’ll be done. We’ll be out.”

Dean pulls the blanket higher up on Sam. Just as he’s about to get up and leave to let the guy get some uneven sleep, Sam looks up at him, with more clarity that he’s shown in the past few days.

“We’ll be okay?” he asks, little kid-voice peeking from behind his grown sasquatch exterior. “Right?”

“We’ll be okay,” Dean echoes. “I can see the finish line, Sam.”

“I can see it, too.” Maybe Sam sees a fire pit, maybe one hell of a scorcher spend in the shade in their backyard. Dean’s even ready to buy one of those stupid wicker chairs that are a literal pain in the ass to sit on, but only if they get two.

Dean presses his hand to Sam’s forehead.

Sam’s already burning up with no pyre in sight.

-

“What are the three ways to kill a ghoul?” Dean asks as he punches out, voice level. Claire ducks under his hand, her braid whipping up into the air.

“Uh…” she mutters, taking a step back, and Dean shakes his head. He advances where she gives him space to.

“Wrong answer. Try this case study on for size: people get weird calls from their dead loved ones, then pop their top ASAP. Who are you hunting?” 

Claire blocks his next kick and manages to land a hard punch onto his shoulder. At least she hasn’t been skimping on her workouts… which clearly couldn’t be said for lore. “U-u-uh, uh, a vengeful spirit?” 

A sharp strike of Claire’s hand later, Dean’s stumbling back. Damn, she’s fast. Using her agility, full steam ahead. He’s impressed. 

"Maybe, but a Crocotta's way more likely." He clears his throat. “Hellhounds. Invisible bastards. How do you see them?” 

“Glasses doused in holy oil?” Claire asks, face scrunched in thought. While she’s distracted, Dean reaches out to grab her braid and yanks hard ‘til he gets her into a headlock. 

“Close enough but no dice. Game over.”

Claire taps out with a huff. “This is bullshit,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re a big strong dude and you don’t play fair, either? Grabbing my hair? C’mon, that’s gotta be against the sparring rules.”

“Rules fly out of the window the moment you decide to become a hunter.” Dean shakes his head. “You aren’t trying out for a ladies’ kickboxing league. Some of your opponents will be big strong dudes who play dirty. You need to be faster than then. Smarter than them. And you need to know your lore so well, you’d give me the right answer if I woke you up at two am, got it?”

“You do know there’s this thing called the internet? I can just look things up on there. There are archives made by hunters if you know where to look. And I do, so…”

“Internet’s great. But if you’re stuck off-grid with no reception, and you realize your vengeful spirit is actually a banshee, what are you gonna do if you don’t know the lore by heart, huh?”

“Ugh. I’ve been studying, I swear. There’s just so much.” Claire grunts, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s boring.”

“It’s not boring,” Sam calls out, indignant, from where he's perched on Baby's hood. He's been watching over the lesson, quiet. Dean hopes the quiet means approval, not silent judgment.

“Research’s boring, dude. I was born on that hill and I’ll die on that hill.” Dean sighs. “But it’s important, too. Not everyone’s got a trusty nerdy sidekick like I do, right?”

She’s clearly still fuming. But that’s what you get when you ask for tips from the old-timers. She’s doing awesome for a rookie with barely a year of hunting under her belt, but he can’t let her off the hook with a pat on the head and _you’re-doin’-great!_. Shit’s rough. Shit’s always been rough. That’s how the life is.

“No one said it’ll be easy,” Dean says at last. “But it’s important work. If you don’t think you can hack it out, stick to flipping burgers or something.”

“You of all people should appreciate the fine folks that flip your burgers, Dean.” Mr. Sarcasm over there with his little quips.

“Am I saying it’s a bad job? I respect it, big time. But if you screw up a burger, you can just toss it. If you screw up on a hunt, innocent people might die. You might die. Your partner might die. So do it well or don’t do it at all.”

Claire looks away, dragging the toe of her beat-up sneaker shoe across the gravel. Dean sees himself, green and wet behind the ears still, getting the reaming of his life from John. Keep your damn gun spotless, boy! Don’t ever get distracted on a hunt! He was so pissed back then, too, even if he was better at bottling it up and never letting it show. John hated backtalk.

“So, which one’s it gonna be?” he says, finally smiling a little.

“Do it well.” Claire raises her head up so fast her ballcap near flies off her head. Meets Dean’s eyes dead on. 

“Then go and brush up on your lore ‘til it shines, y’hear?”

“Sir, yes sir,” she says, and it’s sarcastic except for where it’s not.

-

They drop Claire back off at Jody’s house. A few miles down the road, Dean feels Sam’s eyes on him. He exhales, dropping his shoulders because he could feel it coming since before they pulled away. 

“You think I was too harsh. Too Dad.” Dean’s gaze flickers to Sam, then back on the road, an eternal pendulum in motion. “You know, you’re welcome to play the good cop to my godawful one, Doe Eyes.” 

“No. I don’t think so. I think you did good.” Sam stretches, as much as the car interior would let him. “Dad had a point. You can’t sugarcoat things here. Hunting’s not fun and games.”

“I dunno. We have fun. Occasionally. Remember when you got me that rainbow slinky? And I got you a clown figurine. And you were covered in glitter, head to toe! Pretty sure all motels along that stretch of 35 are still cleaning up that glitter from their bathrooms, dude. Oh, man, that was a fun one.” 

“Could’ve done sans the clown, but, yeah, it was good.” Sam wrinkles up his nose. “What about that time we pulled pranks on each other? With that, uh…” He snaps his fingers. “It was a Tulpa, right?”

“Hell yeah, it was a Tulpa.” Dean pats the wheel to a silent beat. “Remember when we went LARPing? I got to lead the troops into battle. It was when we worked that case with…”

He looks down, his good mood fizzling right out of him.

“With Charlie,” Sam finishes. “And that’s exactly why you had to be hard on Claire, Dean. We’ve lost too many.”

“We didn’t lose them because they weren’t good enough. They got tangled in it ‘cause they were.” Dean chews on his bottom lip. “It doesn’t feel good to cheer on all these baby hunters when I know they might turn up dead before the year’s up.”

“Dean,” Sam speaks softer now, in his patented chicken soup for the soul voice. “If someone really wants to become a hunter, you won’t talk them out of it. There was no talking Dad out of it. There was no talking us out of it. Sometimes, people who see the world for what it truly is, can’t turn a blind eye to it. All we can do is be honest about the job and what it entails.”

Maybe he should turn on the music.

“Besides, we need all the help we can get. We’re stretched thin as it is. And someday… I think I wanna stop.”

“I don’t,” Dean says, voice clipped.

“You don’t?”

“I mean, I do. But we can’t. There’s always something wrong with the world. Or with one of us. Or both.”

“Maybe someday it won’t be.”

“Ha!” Dean shakes his head. “A guy can dream, I guess.”

“And pass his wisdom to the next generation?” Sam’s eyes are teasing again. “You’re a good teacher.”

“I taught the best,” Dean says. 

The car’s cruising down the road, aimed right into the sunset. Pedal to the metal.

-

“You, me, Cas, toes in the sand, a couple of them little umbrella drinks.” Dean waves his hand in the air, pretending to paint a picture. “Matching Hawaiian shirts, obviously. Some hula girls,” he adds in a dreamy voice. Sam snorts in this endeared way.

“You’re talking about retiring?” he asks, surprised. 

“Yeah. If the world was safe, hell yeah we could retire. If there was nothing more to hunt, we’d pretty much be forced to.”

Sam doesn’t say anything to Dean’s revolutionary statements and he whips around to ask, _huh? Huh? Doesn’t that sound nice?_ , but ends up stopping dead in his tracks, his retirement plans forgotten.

Sam’s standing very still in place, hand outstretched and mouth open midway. His eyes are glassy and unfocused. A statue in the middle of the bunker hallway.

“Better not be fucking with me,” Dean mutters, already knowing Sam isn’t. It’s a cruel joke to play, and Sam’s anything but cruel. He walks over to his brother and waves his hand in front of his eyes, seeing if there’s any recognition there. Sam’s frozen.

“Sammy?” he calls out, properly freaked out now. The world’s dead quiet all of a sudden. He can’t hear the usual humming of the bunker’s old pipes, either. The muffled chatter from the war room died down too. There’s not a noise except for his own voice and footfalls. “Dude, wake up.” Dean grabs Sam’s shoulder, and it caves under his fingers like he’s mishandled a hollow porcelain figurine. Dean shudders away in horror, bits and pieces of Sam’s plaid falling from his fingers.

The shoulder break spreads, poison-in-veins, cracks weaving their way through Sam’s body. They slip down from his boots and make their way across the floor. When the wall starts shaking, Dean ducks on the ground, arms around his head. Just in time—it blows seconds later.

He expects to end up buried under the rubble, for the ground to cave and fall on them, but nothing else happens after the initial spray of shards. 

The grass is prickling at his forearms and his middle where his shirt rode up in the dive. Dean opens his eyes and sees a whole lot of nothing. His eyes slowly adjust to the darkness—or maybe it gradually gets lighter. He’s ended up on a patch of grass with a couple trees and a small pond. It’s lit up from the inside, it seems, because everything around is pitch black. Black sky. A black reflection in the pond. Darkness curling up on the edges of the spotlight-bright grass.

And the crowning jewel of it all, a closed door standing in the middle of the lit-up patch. You’d think there would be walls to go with it, but this door was pretty damn independent.

Dean reaches out to put his hand on the wood of the door. It’s warm and softly pulsating like a heartbeat. Fucking trippy.

“Great. I’m dead,” he says out loud. “Again.”

“Quite the opposite. You’re finally alive. You’ve finally found your purpose,” a gruff voice resounds right behind him. Dean whips around and finds himself face to face with John Winchester. Exactly how Dean remembered him on his death day.

John seemed so adult back then. So tired. Almost old.

Dean’s own reflection in the mirror looks more and more like John every day.

“Dad?” he finally asks, because if the bunker can spontaneously combust, he might just run into his father in the surreal afterlife he’s got. 

“Sorry to disappoint,” John’s voice says and the darkness grows bright all of a sudden as six pairs of wings unfurl from John’s back, rushing up higher than any trees or skyscrapers Dean’s ever seen, the uppermost pair near piercing the heavens.

“Michael.” He glares. “Right. I said yes and you welched on our deal the moment Lucifer hit the floor.”

“You can’t say you were surprised,” Michael says, wings curling back down. An afterglow hangs in the air like fireflies. “It was inevitable, Dean. What agreements matter more than fate?”

“Oh, fate? That’s a convenient excuse.”

“Fate, destiny, kismet, call it what you will. You’re my true vessel. It was inevitable you’d give me… or some version of me a yes.”

“So what was all that? You like watching the highlight reel of my life? Can’t you pick the parts when I’m having more fun, at least?”

“I was simply reminding you of what you have wanted for years.” Michael’s hands end up on his shoulders, turning him around to the door. “You want peace.”

“Hey, who doesn’t?” 

“The difference is that you can have it,” Michael’s breathing into his ear now. Dean squirms. “You’ve done Heaven a great service. And I believe it should be rewarded.”

Dean stumbles a couple steps forwards as Michael gives him an encouraging push.

“Open it,” Michael says. Dean considers saying no, but he's already given the grand yes. How bad can things get now? He reaches out, grabbing the warm handle and yanks the door open.

Inside, a lake. Tall trees. Docks. A bucket. A fishing rod. Before Dean can really process it, the surface of the door ripples, the view changing. 

Lisa, dressed for a day in the park, holding a baseball glove. Ben, all grown and tall, beaming at her, a picnic basket in his hands. A girl in a little league uniform with her hair up in pigtails twirls around to see Dean through the door. Her freckled face lights up before another ripple takes this image away, too.

Mary, John, Sam, and Jess, all sitting around a dinner table. Splash. A strip club full of high-heeled gorgeous women, one of them pouring whiskey into a heavy glass. Splash. A firefighter’s uniform folded on a chair. Splash…

“This is pretty much Heaven, huh?” Dean forces himself to tear his eyes away. His feet seem to have inched closer to the entrance. He takes a big step back, just in case.

“No. In Heaven, you relieve what you’ve seen. Your happiest moments. To be honest, Dean, your life doesn’t seem to have all that many happy moments.” Michael tsks, disapproving as if it’s Dean’s fault somehow that his life was somewhat shitty. Is somewhat shitty. He’s not burying himself just yet. “But you’re a warrior who gave himself over for a higher purpose. You get to live brand new memories. All your wishes come true.”

A beat. “So, like a djinn.”

“Your djinn dreamworld wasn’t happy either.” Michael takes a couple of steps behind his back. Dean has to really twist his neck to look back at the guy. Somehow, he can’t turn away from the door. Must be the call of the void. Must be. “You’re so terrified of being at peace, even djinn venom didn’t affect you as much as it should have.”

“Maybe it’s just because I’m so awesome at calling bullshit.” 

Michael doesn’t dignify that with an answer and nudges him forward again. The door’s glowing now. Freaking angels and their love for SFX. “You won’t feel any of that in there. There won’t be any more pain. Any more fear. Weren’t you terrified when Sam fell apart under your hand? You don’t have to feel that ever again. In fact…”

Sam’s standing at the threshold now. Hair messed up, nose red with sunburn, his Hawaiian shirt’s collar askew. The ocean softly splashes behind him.

“It’s okay, Dean,” he says, reaching out, his palm open. Behind his shoulder, Dean sees Castiel lying on a beach blanket, face turned up to meet the sun rays. 

A wave crashes at Sam’s bare feet, spills over the threshold to splash on Dean’s logger boots.

Dean takes Sam's hand. It’s warm and soft, no bruised knuckles or bruises in sight, no calluses from digging up graves.

Castiel stirs, sitting up. He beams at Dean, then waves him over. It’s funny, right, they used to be enemies, and then, after that fated night spent hunting down Raphael…

Dean’s eyes grow wide.

“If I go in,” he says at last, “I won’t ever wake up, huh? Even if Sam manages to eject you out, I won’t wake up.”

“Dean, I’m right here,” not-Sam says, quick. Dean’s more interested in Michael’s silence.

“That’s what happened to Raphael’s vessel when Cas and I found him, huh? He wasn’t too wrecked to even think, he was trapped in a la-la land inside his mind.”

If he goes in, he won’t fight against Michael’s grasp again. If he goes in, and Sam saves him, Sam will have a vegetable for a brother—for the rest of his life, because Sammy would carry taking care of him like a cross. 

“No one is coming to save you, Dean. Because there’s nothing to save you from. You did what you were meant to since your first breath.” Michael’s voice grows insistent. “This isn’t punishment. This is glory.”

Sam’s grip grows tighter, and he’s definitely pulling Dean to the door now. Dean digs his heels in. 

“With glory like that, who needs punishment?” Dean snaps and looks into faux-Sam’s dead eyes. They never get them right. That djinn didn’t, the leviathans didn’t, no one ever does.

He grits his teeth and yanks Sam out of the door. Sam grows paler by the second, and the moment his feet are in the grass, he goes up in clouds of smoke.

“You foolish boy.” And hell if Michael doesn’t sound like a very disappointed John Winchester right now. Dean’s stomach lurches out of pure habit. “You had salvation offered to you on the platter, and you chose to turn it over and throw a tantrum. Tell me, are all humans that frustrating or is it just you?”

“I’d like to think I got something special.” Dean turns away from the door at last. 

“You’ll have to go in sooner or later. Why make it worse on yourself?”

“I tend to do that. ‘Cause I’m afraid of happiness or something, right, Freud?” 

“There’s no other way out of here. Sam’s not coming to save you. No one’s coming to save you. Remember Purgatory?”

Dean’s mouth twitches. “That was then. I like my chances.” 

“There’s nowhere for you to run,” Michael says, voice a growl. Man, Dean being awake must really a bitch and a half for him. 

Dean shoves his hand into his jeans pocket, scrambling for his lighter. Maybe if he lights the door up…

“It’s not in there. This is my world. I wouldn’t give you any weapons, as amusing as you trying to attack me would be.” Michael chuckles. “Go in. Reap your reward. Retire.”

But here’s the kicker, Dean won’t retire while there are still monsters to hunt. Monsters with claws, monsters with black eyes, monsters with wings and offers too good to be true.

“I learned a long time ago you can’t trust salespeople who get all pushy. If the deal was really good, you wouldn’t bother to sell it so hard.” Dean makes a face.

There’s no other way out but through the door, Michael keeps saying. He’s trying to corner Dean, to get him to take that last step in. But a hunter thinks of all possible exits and one more, first thing. That’s what Dad taught him.

Dean stares at John’s face for a split-second and dashes to the edge of the light, jumping right into the black nothingness at the edges. Hunters work the night shift, anyway. 

The darkness swallows him whole.

“Stubborn fool,” Michael snarls. He walks into the dark too, one of his glowing wings almost smacking Dean in the face. But he doesn’t see Dean in it, even though they’re barely three feet apart. Whatever corner of his subconscious Dean jumped into, it hid him well. “You humans always choose your own destruction. Things like that are exactly why you need someone like me to drag you to the light.”

Dean stays quiet on the off-chance Michael can hear him. 

“You could’ve spent your eternity in a daydream. Instead, you’ll have this. Nothing. Forever. I hope it’s worth it, Winchester. If your brother does come to try and kill me, I’ll be sure to pass on the message of loyalty...”

Dean closes his eyes.

“...before I snap his neck.”

So much for angels being the good guys. 

Michael storms away, and soon enough, his wings’ light becomes a tiny fleck of light in the distance.

There’s no up, no down, no sense of direction at all. Dean only took two steps from the oasis, and he wouldn’t be able to find his way back there even if he wanted to.

Valhalla is overrated, anyway. Give him two of those one-way tickets or he’s not interested. 

Dean rubs his eyes and digs his knuckles in until he sees stars in the darkness. 

Sam better hurry the hell up.


End file.
